Mexican rancheras star and Latin pop singer Alejandro Fernández has announced dates for his Hecho En México World Tour. The 28-date trek, which kicks off this May and runs through December, will take the revered singer across North America and Europe and will include his debut shows in Toronto, Canada, London and Paris.

The newly added global tour dates are an extension of the initial leg of the Hecho En México trek, which he announced last November and runs across his native Mexico for multiple dates starting this month. 

The tour is named after his forthcoming album, Hecho En México, Spanish for "Made In Mexico," which releases this Friday (Feb. 14). The album, which features collaborations with Christian Nodal, Luis Carlos Monroy, Jorge Massias and Chico Elizalde with production by Áureo Baqueiro, sees Fernández returning to his mariachi and ranchera roots.

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Alejandro Fernández is considered ranchera royalty. He is the son of ranchera icon Vicente Fernández, the latter of whom is widely known as El Rey De La Música Ranchera, or The King Of Ranchera Music, for his dominance in the traditional Mexican music genre. Alejandro is also the father of Alex Fernández, a rising ranchera singer. 

Last November, the Fernández clan stole the show at the 20th Latin GRAMMYs when the three of them performed live onstage together for the first time ever, delivering a moving performance spanning three generations of ranchera music and culture. 

Read: Alejandro Fernández Revealed

In 1997, Alejandro Fernández released his sixth album, Me Estoy Enamorando (I'm Falling In Love), which marked his departure from ranchera music and expansion into the wider Latin pop canon. The platinum-selling album topped the Latin Pop Albums and Top Latin Albums charts in the U.S. and received a GRAMMY nomination for Best Latin Pop Performance. Fernández received his most recent GRAMMY nomination, for Best Mexican-American Performance, for his 1999 album, Mi Verdad. He has also won two Latin GRAMMY Awards.

Tickets for Fernández's 2020 Hecho En México World Tour go on sale Friday, Feb. 14, at 9 a.m. local time. For more information and for the full tour routing, visit his official website.

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Danna Paola feels comfortable coexisting with her shadows. 

The Mexican singer, model and actress first appeared on television at age five, and has spent recent years dwelling on memories of her youth. Now 28, Danna is dismantling the myths and taboos around her artistic persona.

This process resulted in CHILDSTAR, which arrives April 11. Danna's seventh LP is her most authentic production and one where she makes peace with her childhood.

Accomplishing this freedom took her two years of therapy, the singer confesses to GRAMMY.com. "I deconstructed myself and my beliefs and unlearned many things to learn new ones. The pandemic also opened Pandora's box. That's where everything came out."

Through that self-discovery process, Danna knew she had to break with a constant that had accompanied her for two decades: acting. The last character she portrayed was Lucrecia in the Netflix series "Elite," a popular role that led her to reignite her music career after an eight-year hiatus. Beginning to live authentically, without the vices that fictional characters can leave behind, was the crucial step that led the Latin GRAMMY-nominated singer to CHILDSTAR.

CHILDSTAR follows a lengthy depression and a break from her management team, which Danna has described as controlling. On the new album, she embraces indulgence — singing about female pleasure for the first time in her career — and draws inspiration from her after-hour encounters. CHILDSTAR's darkly powerful electronic rhythms and synth-pop, tell a tale about a weekend of partying, alcohol, and sex to create the perfect escape from "your demons, your life, and your reality." 

Ahead of her album release, Danna Paola discussed the processes that led her to break with her past, how her boyfriend was instrumental to her return to the studio, the synthesizer that inspired the album's sound, and the gift that Omar Apollo left for her. 

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Tell me about the process that led you to co-produce for the first time.

This album is made with a lot of love, many hours, but above all, a lot of freedom. It's a very energetic and aggressive album, liberating.

It was a journey of introspection, empowerment, and self-confidence. Beyond being a sad story, the complete meaning of the album is not to talk and throw shade at my childhood. [It's about what] I have discovered since that first therapy session to find and make peace with my past, and that instead of being a place of embarrassment for me, it empowered me.

CHILDSTAR is the first album in my entire career where every inch, detail, and decision are curated and made by me. That's something that I am very proud of. I made an album for myself and that little Danna who has always wanted to do this. 

It is energetic, super intense, and sexual. Electronic music, funk, dance, synth-pop, and R&B lead me to drain all these emotions. The choice of each song, and the details and creating them from start to finish, [has] been very cathartic.

In "The Fall," you sing, "You don't know me, you don't know s–– about me. I'm not a shooting star." Was it painful to relive the memories of being a child star?

Yes. I grew up in 2000s television. Back then, creating a child's image came from a lot of machismo: being the perfect girl, the girl who doesn't speak badly, the girl who smiles for everything, and whose characters are all good. She can't do bed scenes, can't talk about sex. 

With this project, I embrace that [version of] Danna. I told that girl that everything would be fine. It's OK if you make mistakes, and it is OK to fall in love. Falling in love terrified me because I've been on different projects… every six or eight months; the longest a project lasted for me was a year. I made relationships with people and friends, [but] people always left my life. I built a pretty lonely life; I almost did not spend time with my family. I poured my life into work.

I had this distortion of reality where Danna Paola was the superheroine, and I forgot who Danna was. That's why I stopped acting; creating characters and being in someone else's skin was moving me further and further away from discovering myself as a human being in the ordinary course of life, of creating myself based on situations, emotions, and relationships. 

In therapy, of course, I understood that. I made peace, and today, I am discovering many beautiful things about myself as a child that were precious, happy, and full of love. Of course, I don't blame my parents because they did their best. Nobody teaches you how to be a child star from age five.

The album led you to shine a light on your darkest sides. What did you discover about yourself and Danna as a person and artist?

I was terrified to take risks, to speak, or to create. [To me] creating a project takes a long time, at least with music. I discovered that, for me, [making music] is a spiritual act. It is an everyday practice. It is to continue to discover and continue to learn. It's falling in love again with my profession and giving the industry another chance.

I also learned that our capacity for reinvention is infinite so we can start over. Today, I also begin to be a little more human. However, I don't aspire to be an example for anyone. I want to share my experiences and the lessons I have learned so I can move forward, continue to love what I do, and not lose myself. I used to say that I wouldn't make it to 27. That was in my head.

I'm making a wonderful balance between my personal life and my work. I'm also building my family at home with my boyfriend [artist Alex Hoyer], my two little dogs, my friends, and my chosen family. It's making peace and creating the life of my dreams.

Do you like who you are now?

I love it. I continue to polish many things about my personality. I work hard to be a better human being. Life is about learning and transforming yourself. I can release another album in a couple of years; I may release another this year. I don’t want to stop making music. [I want to] continue transforming myself through my art. 

In the first two tracks, "The Fall" and "Blackout," you repeat that people don't know you. How would you describe the Danna of this record? 

She's a woman who is very sure of who she is, and nobody has given anything to me. I'm in love with my project, my music, and my life, and I'm enjoying it a lot.

I struggle a lot with fame, but today, I present myself as a liberated woman in a good headspace. I don't pretend to be perfect or an example for anyone. Quite the opposite; all I do is share experiences, lessons, and music.

I'm an artist in every sense of the word. I'm a creative, honest person and have a lot of love to give, and I love receiving it, too. That should be mutual. It's an energetic practice that when one really does things with love, the universe always rewards it.

In songs like "Atari" and "Platonik," you openly sing about female sexual pleasure. Is it the first time in your career that you sing about your sexuality? 

Yes. This album is very sexual. There's a taboo when it comes to women talking about sex. In reggaeton, there are thousands of ways in which we can talk about sexuality. In my case, I had always considered it forbidden. 

It's what I told you about the kid [actress] who doesn't [about sex], who's a virgin until marriage. There is no richer pleasure than sex and the sexual pleasure you can have as a woman. There's liberation, to feel good about yourself, with your body, and also the sexual education that I can also share with generations.

This liberation with my femininity is something that I also discovered: The pleasure of being a woman and having many experiences in my life that have led me today to enjoy who I am, to have a happy sex life, and to share it through my music.

In "Platonik," you discuss sexualizing a platonic relationship with a woman and sing "I can't help what I think in my bed." Why was exploring that relationship important to you?

I had a platonic love with a girl at a stage of my life. I kept this to myself; it was a personal experience that opened the conversation to a beautiful story.

I wrote this song with [producer and songwriter] Manu Lara. We made it in half an hour. This song has something unique because, besides talking about a personal experience that is also super sexual, it talks about universal love.

That's why I say that CHILDSTAR is an album of many stories that have marked my life and beyond, talking about only the childhood stage, which is what everyone speculates, but that's not the case.

You’re flirting more with synth-pop in this album. What caught your attention about this genre?

It comes from this aggressive part of saying, here I am. For me, electronic music connects and drains emotions. Every time I've been out partying, electronic music has been liberating for me, and when I put it together with pop and these lyrics, it has become a new way to enjoy the genre.

While creating CHILDSTAR in Los Angeles, I fell in love with a Jupiter [synth] we found at Guitar Center. That synthesizer is in every song. The inspiration [to use the instrument] comes from John Carpenter's synth album [Lost Themes III: Alive After Death]. In it, I discovered synthesizers had a way of incorporating sound design and darkness into the album. 

[Synth-pop is] the expression of that need to bring out the energy I had stuck through music. It’s an emotional purpose, the connection I have with electronic music.

Your boyfriend, Alex, was instrumental in making "XT4S1S" when you didn’t want to enter a recording studio. How was reconnecting with music with help from your romantic partner?

"XT4S1S" is the song that, to both of us, as a couple and as producers, connected us on a hefty level.

I was super blocked. It took me several years to get out of my depression hole. We returned one day from [La Marquesa park] here in Mexico, and started chatting. Alex opened his laptop and started pulling out a beat.

I started throwing melodies, and [shortly] we had the chorus. It brought me back to life. I started crying with excitement because I finally felt again these desires and this emotion that you feel when you create a song, and you can’t stop moving forward and keep creating.

I remember we recorded my vocals on a voice note and sent it to [the production software] Logic. Then, it took us four months to produce this song because it was a lot of discovery, in this case, for me as a producer.

Alex is a great musician, artist, a genius — and I don’t say that because he’s my boyfriend. Artistically, there’s a fascinating world inside his head that I have learned a lot from. 

The track "Amanecer," which features Omar Apollo, breaks dramatically with the story you tell in the album. Why did you end that party cycle with a more folksy, chill song?

"Amanecer" is a track that has us all in love. It was the last song I recorded for the album. 

I wrote it to my ex. On my birthday, he called me — I was already with Alex — and it was super weird. I always feared running into him on the street, seeing him with someone else, and feeling something. And it was the exact opposite. I had already healed internally, and that wound had stopped hurting. I stopped feeling all the emotions I had gone through in K.O., [the album nominated for Best Vocal Pop Album at the 2021 Latin GRAMMYs].

This song talks about knowing how to make peace and understanding how to let go. It’s the dawn of the album. It’s perfect to release all the drama, and all the intensity, and aggressiveness that is the entire album itself.

[The song invites you] to hug yourself and say everything will be fine. There is always an opportunity to start over. 

It also has a beautiful story. Manu [Lara] taught Omar Apollo the instrumental parts of the song, and he made some melodies. At the moment of receiving them, [Omar] agreed we would make a song together, [but] it was almost impossible to record together.

[Instead, Omar] told me "You can use the melodies I made" and left me the last part of "Amanecer." He left us with that magical essence.

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Updated Friday Oct. 13, 2023 to include info about Kendrick Lamar's most recent GRAMMY wins, as of the 2023 GRAMMYs.

A GRAMMY veteran these days, Kendrick Lamar has won 17 GRAMMYs and has received 47 GRAMMY nominations overall. A sizable chunk of his trophies came from the 58th annual GRAMMY Awards in 2016, when he walked away with five — including his first-ever win in the Best Rap Album category.

This installment of GRAMMY Rewind turns back the clock to 2016, revisiting Lamar's acceptance speech upon winning Best Rap Album for To Pimp A Butterfly. Though Lamar was alone on stage, he made it clear that he wouldn't be at the top of his game without the help of a broad support system. 

"First off, all glory to God, that's for sure," he said, kicking off a speech that went on to thank his parents, who he described as his "those who gave me the responsibility of knowing, of accepting the good with the bad."

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He also extended his love and gratitude to his fiancée, Whitney Alford, and shouted out his Top Dawg Entertainment labelmates. Lamar specifically praised Top Dawg's CEO, Anthony Tiffith, for finding and developing raw talent that might not otherwise get the chance to pursue their musical dreams.

"We'd never forget that: Taking these kids out of the projects, out of Compton, and putting them right here on this stage, to be the best that they can be," Lamar — a Compton native himself — continued, leading into an impassioned conclusion spotlighting some of the cornerstone rap albums that came before To Pimp a Butterfly.

"Hip-hop. Ice Cube. This is for hip-hop," he said. "This is for Snoop Dogg, Doggystyle. This is for Illmatic, this is for Nas. We will live forever. Believe that."

To Pimp a Butterfly singles "Alright" and "These Walls" earned Lamar three more GRAMMYs that night, the former winning Best Rap Performance and Best Rap Song and the latter taking Best Rap/Sung Collaboration (the song features Bilal, Anna Wise and Thundercat). He also won Best Music Video for the remix of Taylor Swift's "Bad Blood." 

Lamar has since won Best Rap Album two more times, taking home the golden gramophone in 2018 for his blockbuster LP DAMN., and in 2023 for his bold fifth album, Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers.

Watch Lamar's full acceptance speech above, and check back at GRAMMY.com every Friday for more GRAMMY Rewind episodes. 

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Earlier this year, 24-year-old singer/songwriter Peso Pluma made history when the song "Ella Baila Sola," a collaboration with California group Eslabón Armado, became an international hit, and the first música mexicana track to enter the Top 5 of the Billboard Hot 100.

2023 has been nothing short of epic for the artist born Hassan Emilio Kabande Laija in Zapopan, Jalisco. He also released high-profile collaborations with pop star Becky G, Argentine producer Bizarrap and dembow pioneer El Alfa. Peso Pluma is currently one of the most streamed Latin artists in the world, and he continues this streak with GÉNESIS — his highly anticipated third studio outing.

GÉNESIS drops June 22 on Pluma's brand new label, Double P Records. Here are five takeaways from an album that brings the novel genre of corridos tumbados a few steps closer to the mainstream.

His Rebellious New Sound Is Mexican To The Core

Much has been written about the disruptive energy of corridos tumbados — the youthful, 2020’s movement that brought a breath of fresh air and plenty of irreverence to música mexicana by fusing it with a hip-hop sensibility and elements of trap and reggaetón. Older fans of traditional artists like Los Tigres del Norte and Banda El Recodo have reacted with the same kind of angry condemnation that the punk revolution evoked in classic rock adepts during the late ‘70s. 

But even though Peso Pluma belongs next to Natanael Cano and Eslabón Armado on the corridos tumbados forefront, his music is still faithful to the warmth and melodic immediacy of Mexican tradition. From the rousing "CARNAL" — a collaboration with Cano – to the wistful majesty of "LAGUNAS" with Jasiel Nuñe, the songs on GÉNESIS overflow with the kind of soulful trombone riffs, sophisticated bass accents and complex requinto lines that have defined banda and norteño for decades.  

He Has An Organic Connection With Urbano Music 

A few weeks before the release of GÉNESIS, Peso Pluma shocked the Latin music establishment by becoming the first música mexicana artist to guest on a Music Session by Argentina’s producing wunderkind Bizarrap. Even though the track emphasized the singer’s trademark style — relegating Bizarrap’s cinematic EDM aesthetic to the backdrop — the single demonstrated how comfortable Peso Pluma feels outside his genre of choice. 

One of the new album’s strongest cuts is "77," a seamless duet with Eladio Carrión, the influential American rapper of Puerto Rican origin. Unlike the Bizarrap session, here the trombone and syncopated string instruments blend deeply with Carrión’s low-key, confident flow.

To The Young Generation Of Mexican Stars, Collaboration Is Key 

The música mexicana genre is gregarious by nature, and having like-minded artists guesting on albums — particularly concert recordings — is nothing new. But Peso Pluma takes this notion to the next level, mirroring the hip-hop concept that the glow of a record can be measured by the amount of high-caliber collaborations in it. 

GÉNESIS portrays Peso Pluma’s generation as a nomadic family, climbing the ladder to chart success in coordinate steps. "SU CASA" boasts a high-energy duet with corridos star Luis R. Conriquez, and the languid "LUNA" features 22 year-old sensation Junior H.

There's Nothing Random About Peso Pluma’s Massive Popularity

Doble P’s infectious smile throughout Bizarrap’s YouTube session says it all: there is not an ounce of arrogance or self-importance his demeanor. The artist has captured the attention of the entire world without sacrificing his cultural identity or personhood. 

Currently the most streamed artist in Mexico, Peso Pluma is more than just a charismatic performer. The 14 tracks on GÉNESIS reveal him as a thoughtful composer whose intriguing melodies and slice-of-life lyrics will still resonate for years to come.

Corridos Tumbados Are Here To Stay

From the atmospheric opening cut "Rosa Pastel" — complete with a quirky visual shot in Amsterdam — to the brass-heavy lament of "Bye," GÉNESIS showcases corridos tumbados as a less volatile, more polished genre. Peso Pluma’s instinctive connection to the essence of Mexican music and its artistic values suggests that his current moment of glory may well be the beginning of a long lasting career.

Meet The Gen Z Women Claiming Space In The Regional Mexican Music Movement

Yahritza Martinez grew up hearing her father and uncle play música de tierra caliente, regional Mexican music played on violins, guitar and percussion from the states of Michoacán and Guerrero.  Even as a child, she astounded her family with the potency of her crystalline, soaring voice as she sang along.

Now 16, Yahritza is one of a growing number of young Mexican and Mexican American women who are adding their own swagger and sentiment to regional Mexican. Together, they are having a profound impact on a genre that is experiencing phenomenal growth.

The regional Mexican music movement is clearly having its "Despacito" moment — as of April, 14 regional Mexican tracks appear in the Billboard’s Hot 100, after only landing on the charts three times since 1958.  2022 stats from Spotify place regional Mexican’s streams up 450 percent over the last five years — female voices are largely absent. 

Regional Mexican is a general label that groups different styles of music incorporating the rural folklore of Mexico’s extensive geographies, often from an Anglocentric perspective. This can include styles such as banda Sinaloense, corridos, Sierreño, conjunto Norteño, corridos tumbados, and even mariachi, cumbia and son jarocho.

The difficulty female artists have breaking into the genre are multifold. In an industry discussion on the challenges of breaking female acts in regional Mexican, it was noted that 80 percent of the genre's consumers are male. However, the audience would likely be more gender-diverse if there were more regional Mexican songs written by women or for them — and that is definitely changing.

In April 2022, 15-year-old Yahritza became the youngest Latin artist ever on Billboard's Hot 100 chart — a record held for over 60 years by Ritchie Valens — for her  heartfelt breakup ballad, "Soy El Único." Expressed from a male perspective, it  was the first song Yahritza ever wrote, inspired by the heartbreak comments of other TikTokusers. The same year, Yahritza y su Esencia, a band formed with her brothers Mando and Jairo,  received a Latin GRAMMY nomination for Best New Artist.

It's an equally astounding achievement  that Yahritza y su Esencia broke into the infamously hyper-male regional Mexican movement.  To date she is the only female voice (albeit in a family band) on the popular 50-song Spotify playlist Sad Sierreño, her particular realm of the genre.

A History Of Regional Mexican Music

The variants of Norteño (regional Mexican that originated in northern Mexico and the southwestern United States) play particularly important roles in the collective Mexican American soundtrack. And many of these are based on the corrido, narrative songs born in the 1800s. Throughout the War for Independence and then the Revolution, corridos narrated the triumphs of heroes, their battles, epic adventures and even their horses. These musical stories also came to extol the virtues and lives of admired community members, hard-working people and immigrant struggles — a notable exception being the Narcocorrido subgenre that glorifies the exploits of drug lords. 

Yet, these songs — even when sung by women— always centered the male point of view and were frequently imbued with a toxic masculinity. As Maria Herrera Sobek, Professor Emerita in Chicana and Chicano Studies at the University of California Santa Barbara notes, even corridos that sung the praises of iconic women figures such as the soldaderas — the female soldiers and heroes of the revolution — did so from a masculine perspective.

"The Mexican ballad is really one of the very few, if not the only one, which is still a living tradition," Herrera-Sobek continues. Consequently, Mexican ballad forms will continue to evolve and reflect current circumstances.

In the mid-aughts, two subgenres began iterating on traditional ballads: Urban or trap corridos tumbados blended hip-hop, trap and Norteño. Elsewhere, nostalgic Sierreño folk music from Mexico’s northern mountain ranges, acquired a bedroom pop sheen and spread through social media, driving the popularity of so-called sad Sierreño, songs of amor and desamor.

Yahritza (center) y Su Esencia | José Alavez

This new regional Mexican toggles between the urban and the emo, and has found Gen Z fans on both sides of the border. And while women were largely absent from those early urban corridos and sad Sierreños,  they are now creating music that is unapologetically Mexican and  female. 

There are now four recording artists or bands that are creating a new narrative and centering female voices. By simply singing in  styles which have long been defined by and created for men,  artists like Yahritza y Su Esencia, Lluvia Arámbula, Ivonne Galaz and Conexión Divina are bucking centuries-old norms and codes.

Meet Regional Mexican Music's Mujeres

Zooming in from Argentina, where Yahritza y Su Esencia are performing at a conference, Yahritza declares that being a role model to other young women makes her feel grateful. "There's girls on my live that are like, 'I started playing the guitar because of you. I started singing because of you'," she tells GRAMMY.com. "'My confidence is now up because of you..' There was one girl that was like, 'you saved my life.'"

It wasn't an easy start, she notes. She was shy, a bit scared to sing, and worried about what people would say. But her potent voice, and the magic power of loading it with emotions, "helps me connect with so many hearts." With a soft smile she adds, "A lot of people say that I have an old soul."

Born in Oklahoma, 19-year-old Lluvia Arámbula is an accomplished requinto guitarist. She made a somewhat casual foray into regional Mexican music. "I just liked how everybody was doing the movement. And then I saw that there was no girls too, so I was like, well, let's do it."

Lluvia Arámbula |  Photo by Barf

Her first musical loves were Sierreño and corridos, but she didn’t want to make the corridos tumbados. She preferred a more upbeat sound, writing and singing what she calls "corridos alterados'' that boast fast, word-packed flows. Strong, direct emotions play into her music’s power, offering inspiration "about, going forward, never stopping."

Arámbula has also become a model for young women. "Girls ask me for stuff about my life so that they can do essays about me in school!" she adds.

And for Arámbula, going forward in the Regional Mexican genre also means ignoring the critiques. As she entones in her song " "La Reina," (The Queen), "Criticism is raining down, but that won’t make me stop following my dreams."

Ivonne Galaz, also 19, hails from Ciudad Obregon, the second-largest city in the state of Sonora and  the second most violent city in the world. The state also has one of the highest rates of femicide in the land, so it is no surprise that Galaz is a vocal defender of women’s rights. In 2022,  Galaz released a tribute corrido, "Vanessa Guillen" in honor of the Latina U.S. Army soldier slain by a male soldier (The song was also included in the Netflix documentary on Guillén’s life).

Galaz grew up back and forth between Mexico and the U.S., but notes she is "100 percent Mexican." Galaz is the first female signee to Rancho Humilde, the record label responsible for the ascent of many of regional Mexican’s stars, including corridos star Natanael Cano. The first song she ever wrote, 2019’s "Golpes De La Vida," was recorded with Cano and now has more than 5.5 million views on YouTube. In 2021, Galaz released her first studio album, Voy En Camino.

Ivonne Galaz | Courtesy of Rancho Humilde

Galaz's commitment to inclusivity appears throughout her music performances, where she switches pronouns in songs to make all feel welcome. "If you tell me, ‘I don’t feel comfortable with you identifying me as a woman’, I respect who you are and will never disallow your rules, how you dress, how you feel," she says.

Galaz also shrugs off criticism that she dresses like a man. "I’m not all about the little dresses," she says. "Girls told me on tours, that thanks to me, they took courage to dress the same way." 

The trio Conexion Divina’s hashtags on social media tell their story succinctly and elegantly, indicating: their three instruments  #bajoloche #requinto #guitarra, musical philosophy #mujeresqueinspiran #grupodemujeres (women that inspire, womens’ band), and the importance of representing Mexico #musicamexican #vivamexico #regionalmexicano.

Liz Trujillo, Sandra Calixto, and Ashlee Valenzuela are 18, 20 and 23 years old and grew up in California, Texas, and Arizona, respectively. Conexión Divina released their debut album, Tres Mundos, in April. The trio is the first ever all-women Gen Z Sierreño group, and the first Sierreño group to perform at the 2023 Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival.

They met online and moved to L.A. where Trujillo was based, to make music together.  As they explain on Zoom from L.A, they took their name in part from "Mujeres Divinas" (Divine Women), sung by the legendary Vicente Fernandez. But they didn’t want to be "like the cringey mujeres divinas," and they also wanted to make note of the online origins of their musical bonds, hence, the divine connection.

Self-taught musicians, they quickly realized that the regional Mexican music they loved was "all guys, no girls," says Valenzuela. They were often not taken seriously, but never let this hold them back.

The motifs on their guitars express their boundary-breaking perspective, with each instrument wrapped for each artist in their favorite color and something that represents them. Valenzuela chose the image of Poison Ivy for her guitar because "she empowers women in a different way. Because for me, she's a bisexual character, and I really related to her." Trujillo chose Ellie from the video game "The Last of Us," because as a gay character, "[Ellie] is just like everything that I aspire to be." The pink motifs on Calixto's guitar represent her femininity. "[I'm] the more girly one," she says.

The young women interviewed for this piece note the pushback for their choice of genre — especially, but not exclusively, from Mexico’s more traditional audiences. But they are not without role models. 

Conexión Divina | Camila Noriega 

Rather, they further the musical path first forged by two female regional Mexican singers, who were born within a year of each other on either side of the border in the early 20th century: Texas’ Lydia Mendoza, whose "Mal Hombre" sang of a man who abandoned her (but hardly from a position of weakness), and ranchera diva Chavela Vargas,  who came out at age 81.  Both of these fierce artists left their mark on their genres and broke molds limiting women artists. 

Mendoza shaped Tejano music and was first the genre’s female icon. In 1982, she became the first Texan to be awarded the National Endowment for the Arts’ National Heritage Fellowship Lifetime Achievement. Vargas, a globally beloved, pivotal figure in Mexican music and icon in the Spanish-speaking LGBTQ community, changed Mexico’s ranchera music with her unique interpretation and performance style.

This new generation of female regional Mexican musicians also noted the pioneering influence of Jenni Rivera, the fierce Paquita del Barrio, Gloria Trevi, Latin music’s first female rock star, Mexican no-holds barred singer Ana Gabriel, and beloved borderlands songstress, Selena. Collectively, they upended expectations for women in Latin music, while appealing to ever-broadening audiences — a trend the Gen Z regional Mexican artists are continuing today.

Using their music as an instrument to build the future, they express and foreground a binational, bicultural identity that has no need for the approval of the male gaze. In the lyrics of her anti-femicide song, "Ni Una Más" (Not One More), Galaz rejects a saying common to several Spanish-speaking lands, "Calladita te ves más bonita," or "You look cuter with your mouth shut." As she entones in another of her songs, "Empoderada,"  "That woman cannot be stopped. She knows what she is worth, always empowered."  

Lupita Infante On Honoring Pedro Infante's Legacy & Moving Mariachi Forward With 'Amor Como En Las Películas De Antes'